A few days ago someone I know very well sent me indeed an MMS containing two pictures, this was about midday. Since then I get every day some minutes after 12 the same MMS again. This happened four times now, always with a correct notification. But the “sender” didn’t send. I received indeed also a message while the “sending” device was completely off.
How come???
We checked together on the website of the provider if this causes costs for the sender, it doesn’t. So I guess the provider is not involved and the messages haven’t really been sent. But my device “receives” them.
So I deleted the complete history of all messages on my device to revoke my device any template, but today it happened again. The message came out of nowhere. This means there must still be a copy of the message on a place I don’t know. Where is the origin of this message?
Did this ever happen somewhere else? What can I do (except doing a reboot)?
If you really get multiple messages, and not just multiple notifications about the same message already being on the phone …
MMS get sent to a server of your provider and relayed from there (or an SMS gets sent with a link to see the MMS online).
Please contact your provider about this.
I try to figure that out. Today I rebooted the first time since this happens. Hours later I got this midday two equal messages one minute after each other. Tomorrow I will see what happens when I don’t have any network connection at that time (it’s exactly 12:30). But I’m not sure if the SMS app is then even running at all.
Yes, sure, but I want to exclude the case that my device keeps himself busy. Contacting a provider is always unpromising.
I now contacted the provider, now answer after three days. (This is what I expected.)
I rebooted the device, I cleared the message cache and deleted all the data of the message app. I still get two messages every midday, very reliable.
I will repeat the steps on my device again: stop the message app, clear the cache and then reboot. If I get then still messages I can’t imagine that they come from my device.
Yes, sure. Then I get the messages later when I switch airplane mode off again.
I’m not sure if the Messages app runs in airplane mode so that it could do something (like receiving a message it has generated by itself). So I’m still also not sure about the origin of that messages - is it my device or indeed the provider.
I think that airplane mode is only acting on device modem, but who knows ?
As you keep receiving messages just after going out of airplane mode, they’re likely to be sent by your provider …
If you can get your hands on another phone, you could try to insert your SIM card into it.
Or, to remove the doubt about airplane mode, put your phone in a Faraday box at time of daily reception (I used once a metal sugar box for a test).
But how to get a Faraday box? Once I had an appartment with a builtin safe (this is Switzerland, we all have millions at home). This was indeed a good Faraday box as I detected using a radio controlled watch. But this is years ago.
Is wrapping in aluminium foil and grounding it good enough? Or do I really need an iron material?
Two layers of aluminum foil may do the job, no need for grounding.
Or any kind of metallic box that can be hermetically sealed (often found in kitchens ).
The signal reception may vary with the phone model, the network strength, … I’ve found some interesting places in my home, just trying to call my phone from a land line.
This morning I stopped the Message app hardly and deleted all it’s data a second time. After that I rebooted immediately. This should also have restarted the Message app again.
This midday went by without the phantom messages.
Meanwhile I received an ordinary text message from somewhere, so the Message app is indeed running. It’s all good now but the reason remains still unclear. Either I cleaned the device finally sustainable or the provider did finally stop sending.
Today I got again a phantom message, a simple SMS.
Meanwhile I blame the stock Message app to cause this. There must be a conditional execution path which leads into the situation that the same message is “received” again and again daily at the same time. This can probably only be stopped by terminating the app and clearing all it’s data.
I installed (and activated) QKSMS now to see if this behaves different. (I know the stock app is a clone of QKSMS.)
Something else you could try, is to check/disable SMS in the sync settings of your main /e/ account (in your phone).
AFAIK, many messaging apps relies on Android Messaging system, QKSMS included.
So we have to figure out if this behavior is due to the messaging application, or something else that “pushes” messages directly into the database (as a cloud synchronization system will do).
Do you have the “Phone Sync” NextCloud app (web) activated ?
By any chance, do you own another app who could deal with messages, or synchronize them in any way ?
I’ve got this problem too. Sorry if it’s not the good name, my os is in French, I reset my “APN” to default value (access point name in network and Internet settings) and it solves my problems.
